Last week two twelve year old boys pushed a shopping cart off a second storey level onto the head of a woman who was in the store shopping with her son. She survived and is in the hospital. She's horribly damaged. She may still die or she may live and never be the same again. Her life as she and her husband knew it, is over forever. One of the mother's of one of the little delinquents, who was described by neighbors as being the biggest problem child in their apartment building, cried piteously, apologized in court and said that she needs help becuase she is a single mother. Her kid's depraved beacuase he's deprived so give him a break Mr. Judge...
I am really sick of the single mother excuse.
Society---you---me--- must stop celebrating, coddling and paying money to women who choose to have children out of wedlock. This is a form of child abuse. The widow and the unhappily divorced woman are not who I am talking about so please don't even think about them. The ill raised boy next door or all the way in the worst part of the city may one day crawl into your bedroom window or he may grow up to be the teenager who decides to play the knock out game upside your ancient and beloved grandfather's head so familial disfunction affects us all.
The woman who is perpetually grouchy with her child because she's exhausted and so lonely that she's always on the hunt for a new man and who pays more attention to her new/current man than her innocent child is no modern day heroine.
The woman of means who decides that she wants a baby, now, no matter what and doesn't need some man is no heroine either. I remember reading a memoir by a man whose highly educated and upper middle class mother frivolously divorced his father because he was boring and left her unfulfilled. She then decided to have all the "fun" she'd been prevented from having before. This involved a lot of men and she was not discreet so her son was humiliated when the neighborhood kids mocked him. He was also frightened at times because some of the men his mom brought home were threatening characters. Eventually, his mother's wild oats were sowed and she settled down and married a nice man. She would like to forget her growing pains years. Her son could not. I'm not advocating that society go for the Hestser Prynne treatment but the "You go girl!," crap and the "Aren't you wonderful and amazing, and brave" patter needs to die. We desperately need another Dagger John Hughes.
Anne Coulter really said it best:
"Single motherhood is the apotheosis of the feminist vision: women without men! Except they're not without men. They're without one specific man with an interest in their particular children. But men -- and women -- across the country have been forcibly enlisted in the job of feeding, housing, and clothing single mothers and their children. The rest of us have to be constantly attuned to the needs of single mothers. Government policies are designed to support single mothers, rather than stop them. Churches, corporations, and nonprofit organizations are required to chip in to make up for single mothers' lack of husbands. I am woman, hear me roar! Hey, what's the holdup on my government check?"
St. Germaine, patron of ill used children, pray for us all.